In the Flesh: Fast and Furious 6 (Patreon)

It’s bigger! It’s dumber! It’s a full-blown spy action movie with giant planes, armored ramp cars, Luke Evans as a deadly English ex-special forces killer, and a tank hidden inside a cargo truck! Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) uses a controlled crash to launch himself out of a car and across the divide between two bridges, catching Letty (Michelle Rodriegruez) in midair. Oh and Letty has amnesia. And is alive. It’s  an order of magnitude wackier than the fifth film’s vehicular hijinks, stuffed full of soap opera nonsense and continuing the series’ bizarre power creep in which brawlers become kung fu masters and engineers become Bond-esque gadgeteers inventing propane-powered harpoon guns and invincible cars as enemies are transformed relentlessly into allies through exposure to the Toretto team’s rough and ready brand of family violence.

The big weaknesses in this outing are Chris Morgan’s under-edited script, spelling even the smallest plot beats out twice before execution, and the Rock’s ineffective nature as a protagonist. Johnson did solid work as an unstoppable meathead antagonist, but as part of the team he’s dramatically inert, his inexpressiveness and hulking physique making him feel more like a life-sized action figure than a character in a movie. Evans meanwhile is a pretty good heel, unsentimental and playful without coming across as a monologuer. He’s always two steps ahead of our heroes, but Fast 6 refuses to pull the trigger and make him a real threat. Even when he finally does carve a single notch against the gang, Morgan’s script shies away from showing blood or bodies. It all feels a little bit like kiddy games.

In general all our heroes feel a little softer and squishier this time around, a sentimentality a better script might exploit to wring a little emotion out of its viewers, but Lin and Morgan seem content to coast until we wind up back in tepid domestic bliss, more or less. The Torettos get their white picket fence, Evans gets put on a ventilator, Han telegraphs that he’s about to die in Tokyo about thirty times, and the team chalks up another win. Weaker than Fast 5 and with all its fundamental flaws, Fast 6 still manages to eke out a little fun with its over-the-top stunts and cheesy CGI explosions, but the returns are diminishing quickly.